Charles Lightoller is forced to remember
by LucyStag
Summary: Charles Lightoller is the surviving senior officer of the RMS Titanic. More than a year later, memories of the night come back.Not based on the movie, no matter what it might say!


Based on an incident in "The Oydessy of C. H. Lightoller" by Patrick Stenson. I don't own Charles and Sylvia Lightoller, they were real people. Margaret, George and Robert are made up.

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Summer 1913

Sweat drips down Charles Lightoller's back.

"Sylvia!" He calls.

"What is it, Bertie dear?" comes the Ausssie accent he had (by his own count) taken less than a second to fall in love with those years ago. And the delightful, spirited woman that went with the voice. Picking her petite, beautiful body up in his arms and carrying her around the treacherous (for a woman lacking in the proper sea-legs) deck of _the_ _Medic_ was unquestioningly the best decision of his life.

"I'm done for the day, darling" he says. "Tennis in the summer time wears a man out."

"It is a blazer, isn't it?" Sylvia says smiling. "Have some more lemonade."

"I will just take a quick cold bath, you get back to your chat with Margaret!" He smiles at his wife's friend. The two women had been enjoying their husbands' tennis game from the sidelines. Now as Lightoller abandoned the game, Margaret's husband Roberts found a new partner in George. The summer tennis party at Nikko Lodge had been going on for hours, but Lightoller has been vanquished by the sweltering heat.

Sylvia gives him a cheerful wave and turns back towards the new tennis game already getting dramatic.

Lightoller wipes the sweat from his brow as the bath slowly fills. He thinks maybe he is getting a little old, as he is the first inside and the other men are still playing! But that's no way to think! A little old! Only 40, he tells himself and sure as hell not done adventuring yet. Just because he has enjoyed some relaxing days... after last year. That doesn't mean he is ready for a permanent place in any armchair..

Lightoller turns off the faucet and strips off his clothing. He steps slowly into the bath and lowers himself in.

_One thousand knives stab into his body, and the shock of it is so great that he doesn't know how he stays conscious. The water sucking into the hold of that damned ship grabs him with a dumbfounding strength. He is pressed against wires. Wires between him and a long fall into the bowls and belly of the sinking giant and certain death. He is let go and he is pulled back by the suction. He swims half crazed from the cold, first towards the rapidly sinking crow's nest. Pull yourself together! There is no safety to be found there. Then a terrible noise. The funnel falling. Cables snapping. Inches from him. He is pushed by a great wave. He breaths in sea water and his lungs burn. His hand is clutching something solid. The boat! The Engelhart that overturned! He pulls himself aboard. There is screaming. Such screaming and such cold._

_2:20 AM by a watch. "She's gone" it's said like a eulogy._

"_Maybe we should say a prayer" someone says. Twenty-odd men recite._

"_Our father who art in heaven..."_

"_Oh God please!"_

"_Help! Help! Help!"_

"_Hallowed be thy name"_

"_Thy kingdom come, thy will be done."_

"_Please!"_

"_On earth as it is in heaven."_

"_Aaaaaaa!"_

_He isn't even praying for survival. He is praying for God to make him deaf._

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Where on earth has Bertie gotten to?

Roger and George are still outside batting away with their racquets and Margaret cheers her husband on shamelessly. Sylvia excuses herself, still sipping her lemonade, and begins to search the Lodge for her husband. It had been more than an hour since she last saw him. Perhaps he's taken a nap, but she likes to know for sure. No sense in worrying.

He's not in the kitchen or anywhere downstairs. She walks up the steps.

She hears the drip of the bathtub and cautiously knocks on the door. No answer. It's ajar and she opens it. "Bertie..."

Her husband sits in the bathtub naked and staring straight ahead with horrified eyes. He jaw is clenched so hard it looks as if his teeth must break. Every muscle seems locked at its most taut, but he is still breathing. Thank God, he is breathing.

She stares in horrible confusion for a moment and then she rushes over. "Bertie?" "Bertie!" She screams for the men outside to come.

"Bertie WHAT'S WRONG?" She grabs his shoulders and shakes him.

And then she feels the icy cold water in the tub. As Robert, George and Margaret run in Sylvia hears Bertie's voice in her mind. Bertie after suffering the weight of survival and the weight of being the surviving senior officer...Finally coming home from the exhausting investigations and questions and finally telling her about that night. His usually rich voice not shaky, never shaky, but the difference in his eyes...

"_I'm only going to tell you once, Sylvia. If you really want to know. Then I want to forget it."_

"_It felt like a thousand knives, Sylvia, that water felt like thousand knives."_

"_We couldn't try and pull anybody in the water out. It would have tipped. Every man...for himself. We stood for hours on that overturned boat and it was so cold. Some men just fell into the sea and died and there was nothing anybody could do. "_

"Take him out of there, Robert! George!" She cries. They reach down and pick up Bertie like a dead child as Sylvia rushes for a blanket. They carry Bertie to his bed and lay him down. Sylvia covers her husband's naked, cold body with a quilt from the winter chest.

"Please, George, call the doctor at once. Margaret will you get him some tea...For when he wakes up?" She asks briskly, but so shaky.

"Of course, Sylvia." her friend says, frightened and obliging.

George nods and exits in a hurry.

Robert stands and looks at Sylvia with a question in his eyes. But she turns to put another blanket over Bertie who seems to be slowly coming back to her.


End file.
